1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a printing system having a printing processor of a digital system, which includes a printing head for discharging ink onto a printing target material based on digital data to execute desired printing, and a printing processor of a non-digital system.
Further, the invention relates to a printing method having a printing process of a digital system by using a printing head for discharging ink onto a printing target material based on digital data to execute desired printing, and a printing process of a non-digital system.
2. Related Art
In clothing manufactures and textile manufactures, existing “printing” in which a design and the like are printed on a surface of a fabric main body has been widely performed. There are various printing methods. There are an analog system (hereinafter, referred to as “non-digital system” in the specification) exemplified by the screen printing, for example, and a digital system by an ink jet printing device which adheres ink discharged from a printing head to a printing target material so as to execute printing.
The non-digital system is suitable for mass production and printing can be performed on a large area for a short period of time with the non-digital system. However, in the case of a screen printing system, for example, a screen dedicated to each of different designs is required to be prepared and a screen is required to be prepared newly when changing a design. Therefore, there is a disadvantage in the non-digital system that the degree of freedom is lower. On the other hand, the digital system tends to be inferior to the non-digital system in terms of mass production. However, when an ink jet printing device is used, for example, the digital system can respond to various designs extremely easily and rapidly.
Accordingly, for example, in order to use the advantages of both the non-digital system and the digital system, a printing processing method in which a background image is printed with the non-digital system, and then, a center image is printed with the digital system is also employed (for example, see, JP-A-2004-291493 and JP-A-2005-45644).
Meanwhile, when printing is performed through the two printing processes, there arises a risk that deviation of printing positions between first printing and subsequent printing occurs. In JP-A-2005-45644, in view of the above-described problem, a system in which a T-shirt or the like on which screen printing has been performed is placed on a platen, an image is read by a CCD image sensor across the whole platen, the read image and an input image (which is an image to be printed) are displayed on a screen of a monitor in a superimposed manner, positioning is performed by a user operation, and then, printing is performed has been disclosed. Further, a technique in which a digital camera is used instead of the CCD image sensor and, two identification markers given onto the platen are read by the digital camera, and image analysis is performed based on the read result has been also disclosed.
However, with the technique as described in JP-A-2005-45644, positioning is performed by the user operation on the monitor screen. Therefore, time and efforts are required for the positioning and this arises a risk that productivity is lowered as a whole.